13 August, 2012

Review: Ender in Exile

Okay, so I admit that I have a strange fascination with Ender's universe. Despite the blatantly offensive premises the author writes into these books (anti-gay, anti-muslim, anti-atheist, anti-polyamorous), I am nevertheless still riveted by the storyline. Perhaps, as someone who attempts to write fiction himself, I recognize just how difficult it is for a writer to do what Orson Scott Card has accomplished here. Yet whatever the reason, this book gets five stars like almost every other title in this series.

I'll admit that the ending _seems_ a bit forced at first. The Achilles' son storyline from the last book in the series hinted at the possibility of a real supervillain coming into the picture, and yet -- in the end -- Ender was able to deal with the situation fairly easily, using yet another authorial premise that I strongly disagree with: the idea that Bean's dna could not murder unnecessarily. But, in a way, even this unsatisfying conclusion to this story arc makes a lot of sense, as it really points toward a repeated fact that so often gets overlooked in these books: in the end, the most important factor is just dumb luck.

On a philosophical basis, then, this book is very interesting. The conclusions it arrives at are wrong, of course -- any conclusion reached by starting with prejudiced premises against gays, polys, atheists, and muslims will be inherently flawed -- but the journey is still an interesting one, and as this is just fiction, after all, we can always suspend our disbelief just enough to posit that Ender's world really is one where Card's prejudices are true.

In the end, I wonder how many people can actually read the text that way. Not many, I'd imagine. But I am one of them, and as such, I really enjoyed this entrant in the series. Yet maybe that says more about me than it does about the book itself.

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The dividing lines are there, between each instantiation of "I", even if I can never quite get a glimpse of them. If I squint just so, fast-forwarding through the events of a past self, I don't quite reach a boundary so much as reach a gap. After which another "I" instantiates itself. The dividing line is there; I'm sure of it. But it only seems blurrily visible when I don't focus on it. As soon as my eye approaches, it disapparates into the ether.

One of the greatest joys I've personally experienced is that feeling you get when you genuinely change your mind. It's especially rewarding when you can feel the dominoes falling as each step in a logical sequence causes you to change your mind on increasingly complex lemmas after a basic premise's truth value switches.

I recently read a four year old article by Eliezer Yudkowsky on why Many Worlds survives Occam's razor. The argument was persuasive enough to cause me to change my mind on a stance I've held for nearly two decades.

I subscribe to a lot of podcasts. I use podcasts to keep up with the news, learn more about the world, and expand my mind generally. As such, I've sampled and stopped listening to more podcasts than most people have even heard of.

@EricHerboso

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This story is hard science fiction at its best. I thoroughly enjoyed this book not only for its exploration of plausible yet utterly fantastic ideas, but also for the story and characterization as well. Like all hard scifi, the main focu...

This book is hard science fiction at its best. I found myself riveted by each new section, unable to put the book down for more than thirty seconds at a time. The combination of a compelling story with such scientifically plausible eleme...

Although some sections suffer from the prejudices of the day, overall this book really touched my heart. I found myself really enjoying all the characters in their own way, and I loved the way that Anne changed over the course of her yea...

Although the book suffers from the blatant sexism of its day, it was forward thinking for its time, and had some very positive messages about what ideals should be truly valued. The science in the book was hit or miss; some parts make it...